No future for factory farming

Every year, factory farming condemns billions of animals to lives of cruelty and suffering for fast profit. Trapped in cages, mutilated and squashed together, pumped full of antibiotics to stay alive.

What’s more, factory farming is destroying wild animal habitat to grow crops to feed farmed animals: killing wildlife, worsening the climate crisis, poisoning our rivers, and creating superbugs and disease that can jump to humans.

The problem will get worse before it gets better. Demand for cheap meat and dairy is growing rapidly with big increases expected globally including in Africa, Asia and Latin America in coming years.

Factory farming is a global problem, requiring a global solution. A moratorium on factory farms is urgently needed to safeguard animals, our climate, health and environment. 

 

Stopping the destructive animal feed trade

cop26 factory farming climate change

Cruel factory farming relies on a global trade in crops to feed farmed animals. Tropical forests are destroyed to make way for crops destined for factory farms around the world.

The special dietary needs of factory farmed animals bred for profit drive the global trade in destructive animal feed. Animals in factory farms are bred to grow fast, have large litters, lay high numbers of eggs, or produce a maximum amount of milk. This causes great suffering over their short lifetimes. Chickens have been bred to reach their slaughter weight about twice as quickly as 40 years ago, and their legs cannot keep pace with the rapid body growth. As a result, many chickens suffer from painful, sometimes crippling leg disorders.

Almost 80% of the world’s soy bean crop is fed to farmed animals, not people. Pesticides are used extensively, contaminating rivers and killing people and wild animals. A moratorium on factory farming would free up land for communities to grow food for people, supporting global food security and addressing the climate crisis. It would also relieve pressure on wild animal habitat and give wildlife a fighting chance.

Industrial-Farming-Pigs-in-Cages
Factory farming is laying the foundations for another global pandemic but we can change this

The 5 worst health impacts of factory farming

New report reveals how factory farming puts public health and planet’s future at risk:

Learn more

Ending irresponsible antibiotic use in farming

Three-quarters of the world’s antibiotics are used in animals, most on factory farms to stop stressed animals getting sick. Antibiotic overuse causes superbugs to emerge. Superbugs can escape from farms via workers, into the food chain and our environment and water ways.

Already, the superbug crisis is responsible for 1.27 million deaths every year due to antibiotics no longer being effective.

The same low welfare conditions that give rise to superbugs can also cause diseases like bird flu or swine flu to emerge from factory farms and jump to humans.

A moratorium on factory farming is the best way to safeguard public health and the health of our environment. Fewer farmed animals, living in high welfare conditions, will not be reliant on antibiotics.

 

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